


Fanfic and Profic

by yourlibrarian



Category: Fandom - Fandom, Supernatural
Genre: Books, Fanfiction, Gen, Meta, Sex, Writers, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 02:32:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6835429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When pro-authors enter areas populated by fans looking for fanwork recs, the results may not be pretty.  Also a discussion about the purpose of sex in fanfic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fanfic and Profic

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted May 25, 2007 and June 3, 2007

Maybe it's the whole Fanlib thing that has everyone rather prickly right now, but I was fascinated to see the reaction to Keith DeCandido's post at an SPN comm where he was promoting his book, the first tie-in novel to Supernatural. [The reaction was not particularly positive.](http://supernatural-tv.livejournal.com/1026160.html)

The thing is, I rather agree with the posters. What the novel excerpt makes so painfully clear is the difference between "publishable" writing and fanfic (though I'd prefer the more accurate term "uncommercial"). Because it's true that SPN has many good fanfic writers but more importantly they are simply trying to do _different things_ with their text that no commercial text will do, because the whole point of commercialism is to try and reach the largest audience possible for your product. 

And it's not that fanfic writers don't want to reach scores of people, but I suspect, and this is only my guess, that they don't just want readers. They want readers who "get it." They want readers who understand what they're trying to say, who agree with their POV, and who enjoy what they, the writers, enjoy. And while I think a commercial writer may want people to like their writing, the whole issue of POV, or what makes a character truly the character, and all the things we care about in fanfic are quite beside the point. To a great degree pleasing the publisher is more important than pleasing the audience, because the publisher will give you another job while it's impossible to tell _why_ an audience likes something or doesn't when you're talking about mass-produced fiction.

Some other interesting reactions seemed to fall along two lines. One was that, confronted with writing similar to what they themselves were doing, a lot of people felt much better about their own work, as well as the likelihood of ever getting to do it professionally. The second was that people felt somewhat offended by being offered something commercial that wasn't even the sort of thing they'd read for free. It made me wonder if part of the response wasn't just based on people's feelings, not about their own fic, but their offense that the fic they like and believe is well done doesn't get sufficient recognition outside of fannish circles. While a lot of people are reluctant to share fanfiction they enjoy even to people they know, I think the idea that someone else can get significant recognition (as well as a paycheck!) for doing work that is inferior triggers people's fairness meter. 

What may be even more unspoken is people's anger that the sorts of things they want to read, and which fandoms produce in large quantities, are not generally found in commercial work. The notion that they, both as individuals and as a group (since most people reading fanfic are aware that they're doing it in a sort of communal way), are either badly underserved, completely ignored, or actively have their reading tastes dismissed, is also bound to seem both unfair and personal in nature.

Another thing that the excerpt and poll results made clear is that the offline, isolated fans of anything are likely not the same as the online fans. There are probably opinions that are shared, but I suspect that their views of the stories, the characters and so on are quire different. While even among online fans it's impossible to know for sure what will please people, it's tougher still for publishers to know (assuming they even cared). Therefore novels written for a mass audience are likely to be written to the lowest common denominator, in both tone and language, meaning that underage readers are assumed to be among the audience. As a result more older readers will think those tie-ins have problems with characterization, will find the plots fairly boring, and the language level too basic.

### The Function of Sex in Fanfic

Of course, it also can't be overlooked that a great deal of fanfiction isn't just more adult in terms of approach but also in sexual content. Yet even if the tie-in novels contained this, I really doubt it would be anything like what fanfic readers are used to. For one thing, while there's a lot of PWP out there, there's also a lot of work that simply contains sex as one element, and there is usually some sort of in-story function for that sexual activity.

I couldn't help noticing that [in this NY Times article](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/weekinreview/03kennedy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) all the people writing stories which supposedly want to make sex "meaningful" by either making it absent or ill-informed were men and the one author profiled as writing in counterpoint to the "trend" was a woman. 

_She wanted to create a group of contemporary characters for whom sex was not meaningless but also not meaningful in an exaggerated, fetishistic way — just another of the ways humans communicate, trying to say those things that can’t be said._

_“All the things they do in the book are examples of relating to each other in a more or less loving way,” said Ms. Smiley, 59, born a year after Mr. McEwan. “All of the interactions are equalized.”_

I don't know if using sex as communication is a specifically female tendency, though if one looks at literature, whether commercial or amateur, I think it might be skewed that way. The question is whether or not that's just a cultural thing, because men write about women mostly as objects so that there isn't really any reason for communication, and sex becomes more of an obsession than a connection. On the other hand, women are most likely to have men's undivided attention during sex and to feel that this is when they are being most open, so it might indeed be an ideal time to communicate with them.

Part of my interest in this writing goes to the issue of communication in general -- why are some people communicative and others not, and in what ways. I mean, to a certain extent one could say sex scenes in fic are an example of show not tell, which is certainly a good way of better understanding characters, especially those who don't express themselves in very verbal ways.

I recall some time ago reading a meta on comics fandom which discussed how for men fight scenes tended to serve the same purpose that sex scenes did for women. Yet for women the two things aren't an either/or given that we have many stories about relationships where the fight scene is a lead-in to the sex scene. However, I do think that there is something to the idea of barrier breaking between individuals who don't verbalize or who are resistant to verbalizing or making connections with others. And that then expresses itself physically in either conflict or sex.

So in some cases I'd think the whole point of including sex (or a fight followed by it) is to have characters with irreconcilable differences who still admire one another in some way get to a point where they can express that without either denying or resolving the differences. (Because their differences, after all, are what make them interesting as characters).

However, it's pretty obvious why this approach is used in fic and not commercial fiction, especially of media tie-ins. For one, especially in the U.S., the most graphic violence can be shown with barely a warning but sex that isn't even physically revealing can appear with a mid-show warning notice. The other is that the characters in question are most often two men and the idea that they'd resolve differences through sex rather than violence is pretty unlikely in TV or film, even if fanfic writers often see clear subtext in their interactions. So in this respect, fanfic is often speaking a completely different language without the baggage of censorship, or the commercial squeamishness about offering an audience anything it may not already be expecting.


End file.
